introspection quotes

All of us should be on guard against beliefs that flatter ourselves. At the very least, we should check such beliefs against facts.

The question is not, ‚Do you have a problem?‘ The question is, ‚Does the problem have you?‘

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

And when I was young, my family was perfectly nice. I write a lot about it, as you noticed. But it was rather limited. I think, I don’t think anyone in my family would really feel I’d done them an injustice by saying that. We didn’t see many people. There were many books. It was as if I wanted to get away from home.

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!

The reason why the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself.

We are wiser than we know.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

My life has been one great big joke, a dance that’s walked a song that’s spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.

A game is like a mirror that allows you to look at yourself.

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me.

Without stirring abroad, One can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window One can see the way of heaven. The further one goes The less one knows.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

I spent most of the early years of my walk with God focused on what was wrong with me. Most of us probably do that, hoping to change ourselves.

He who knows himself is enlightened.

Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you’re the funniest person you’ve ever heard of.

I guess every single word I’ve ever said is going to be dissected now.

If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.

Go to you bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

I am getting to the point where the only love worth being in is the love worth singing about.

Love is an interesting thing. Perhaps I’ve never been in love before – I don’t really know? I think I have. I guess it’s subjective in that way.

I’m really trying to dredge up what one might call intellectual and moral material. For example, when do you realize that you are an American? What age does that happen to you? When do you realize what religion your parents practice? When does it all become conscious? I was interested in exploring all of that.

My lectures, based on Islamic teachings, were on various subjects. Some of the titles were, ‚The Intoxication of Life,‘ ‚The Purpose of Life,‘ ‚The Real Cause of Man’s Distress,‘ ‚The Journey to the Goal in Life,‘ and, one of my favorites, ‚The Heart of Man.‘ They contained important insights that spoke to something deep inside me.

I always wonder when it was that I was embraced.

And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

When I was making the early stuff, I never expected it to be so big. I was in my own kind of bubble. I never wanted to tour; I just wanted to create music and make a diary I could put out into the world. And sometimes, I became the characters.

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.

However far back I go into my childhood, nothing seems to me more characteristic of, or more familiar in, my interior economy than the appetite or irresistible demand for some ‚Unique all-sufficing and necessary reality.‘

I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.

Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.

When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

The power of our thoughts may never be measured or appreciated, but it became obvious to me as a young boy that there was value and power in being aware of my thoughts and how I expressed myself.

I have an obsession with knowing the answers to things. When I don’t know what happened, it just bothers me, gets under my skin, and I need to write about it.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I’m really not worth being called an artist at all.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

I talk to myself all the time. Just make sure you answer.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

I get naturally uncomfortable when I’m put under a magnifying glass.

The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution – this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths.

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

There’s love, and certainly children you care about more than yourself. But nevertheless, we’re alone in our heads.

‚Kiss Land‘ wasn’t about what people wanted to hear on the radio. It was the state of mind I was in – introverted, like David Cronenberg’s ‚Naked Lunch.‘ You didn’t know if you were hearing a chorus or a verse. It was just my thoughts.

O‘ What may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?

I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.